The thing I think would surprise people the most is my relationship with death. I’m a critical care anesthesiologist. It’s an exciting, rewarding field – I tell my medical students and residents that it blends expertise in the human body with mastery o…
Medicine is an art. One can learn about symptoms, diagnostics, and treatment plans for various diseases, from textbooks and journal articles. It is harder to study empathy, compassion, and human connection from conventional academic resources. The art …
“Being a neonatologist and a mother is living with the knowledge that the question ‘What would you do?’ could so easily become real, not hypothetical. And so what would I do? I don’t know, heartbroken mama. Because I feel too much, b…
“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” – George Orwell The “difficult” family At 2 a.m., on my first night shift as a pediatric resident, a patient, Casey, transferred from another hospital. She had a rare, p…
It was a cold winter morning in January 2021. Another day in the ICU, another day caring for critically ill patients with complex medical conditions, another day caring for patients on their death beds, another day interacting with patients’ families a…
General Douglas McArthur said: “However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and give his life for his country, is the noblest development of mankind.” The soldier is trained to kill, and they learn to kill well…
I was an assistant nurse manager (ANM) in a 24 bed ICU in my younger, energetic years. Before that, I was a manager in a very small emergency department. I must say, I loved it. I loved the thrill and the challenge. I was able to work with the Joint Co…
Drip. Drip. Drip. It’s 8:00 p.m. I’m staring at the IV tubing. We forgot to stop the fluids. I’m standing in the resuscitation room alongside the naked, broken body of a teenage male. Unable to break my gaze on that dripping IV line, thinking, We’re go…
“Early in the pandemic, in thinking of and discussing possible solutions to help protect health care workers, two of my former colleagues and I recalled a device called the Surgical Smoke Evacuator (SSE), which we used extensively since the 1990s…
“I write this as a caregiver, patient educator, and clinical researcher. The coronavirus pandemic has shone a spotlight on intensive care units (ICUs). Due to the rapid and continued increase in critical illness from COVID-19 infection, discussi…
